Researchers return to Britain’s Jurassic ‘Highway’ to uncover new dinosaur footprints

In Summer 2024, a major new dinosaur track site was uncovered at Dewars Farm Quarry, near Bicester in Oxfordshire. The story of this excavation was featured on BBC Two’s Digging for Britain earlier this year - which was presented by Professor Alice Roberts, who is also the University of Birmingham’s Professor of Public Engagement in Science - and is available on iPlayer.

This summer, the track site was expanded as a new area at Dewars Farm quarry containing dinosaur trackways was uncovered by teams from the Universities of Oxford, Birmingham and Liverpool John Moores and Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH) who joined forces for a week-long dig.

The team painstakingly uncovered around 200 more footprints making up four trackways that were identified and then documented using detailed 3D models of the site from aerial drone photography.

New findings from the excavation include Europe’s longest sauropod dinosaur trackway, which spans approximately 220 metres from the first to the last exposed footprint.

The four new trackways found at the Oxfordshire site were each made by sauropod dinosaurs: large-bodied, long-necked herbivores, like Cetiosaurus, that made their way along an exposed mudflat on the edge of a lagoon some 166 million years ago during the Middle Jurassic Period.

The excavation was made possible through the continued collaboration with the quarry operators Smiths Bletchington, Dewars Farm and Duns Tew Quarry Manager Mark Stanway, and his staff. This latest dig follows on from the week-long excavation which took place in June 2024, co-led by the Universities of Oxford and Birmingham, featuring a team of more than 100 people.

Kirsty Edgar, Professor of Micropalaeontology at the University of Birmingham and one of the excavation leads, said:

“We were delighted to be welcomed back to Dewars Farm quarry earlier this year, to continue excavating and discover more dinosaur tracks. This site in Oxfordshire is the largest dinosaur track site in the UK, and arguably now the largest mapped dinosaur track site in the world when we consider finds dating back to the 1990s on the same surface nearby.”

Over seven days, the teams battled against a much drier, harder surface than the previous year focusing on a set of around 80 very large (up to 1m long) sauropod prints, that ran approximately north-south across the entire site forming the record-breaking trackway.

In addition to the long sauropod trackway, three other shorter trackways were uncovered, one of which is a continuation of prints first found in 2022. Although not continuously exposed, it may prove to be an even longer trackway once all the data is pieced together. Smaller finds at the site included marine invertebrates, plant material and a crocodile jaw.

Richard Butler, Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Birmingham and and one of the excavation leads, said:

“Most of what we know about dinosaurs comes from their skeletons, but footprints and the sediments that they are in can provide valuable additional information about how these organisms lived and what their environment looked like over 166 million years ago.”

Key new work in this latest excavation included systematic sampling of the sediments that both underlie and fill the footprints, with analysis of these currently underway to find out more about the environment in which they were made and how they were preserved.

More of the footprint surface is likely to be exposed over the coming years, and a full description of the significance, new scientific discoveries and potential for future preservation of the site is expected soon.